Toilet Chucking, the new olympic event?!

You'd be surprised at the types of stupid things that people do on TV. For instance, I was watching a TV show recently about really odd sports. I saw one sport where the guys basically tied ropes onto toilets and threw them like the track and field event the hammer throw. "Holy smokes!", I exclaimed when I saw them tossing toilets, "Circular motion, Centripetal force, and Projectile Motion?!" By swing the toilets in circular paths around them, they were able to build up force and speed until they reached a top...uhhh...rotating speed. Then, when released, the toilets flew into the air and broke into several hundred thousand pieces. One guy managed to throw the thing 31m! Not bad! If you've ever tried to lift up a whole toilet, you'd understand. I watched in awe at how simple, mindless, and just plain odd "sport" would have so much physics behind it. Well not really. I really just sat there and watched the stupidity of those people tossing perfectly good toilets and then spending about an hour afterwards cleaning it up. Some people just really have to find a better past time than chucking toilets. But who knows, they may be onto something....





or not.

Trebuchet Madness

So while i was working on my creative project for Brit Lit, which was a sword, I began thinking about the good old medieval realm. And then what popped into my mind but the good old trebuchet. What I realized though was that many of the things required to make a trebuchet required apply to physics. For instance, the counter weight of the whole thing is made from a bucket containing a bunch of really heavy rocks. By lifting these rocks up, it greatly increases the potential energy of the counterweight. Then, when it is released, the potential energy is turned into kinetic energy as it swings down and swings the other side up. This kinetic energy is then transferred into the sling and the projectile, usually another large rock, and it is sent in an arc towards the enemy castle. This arc obviously follows a beautiful projectile motion arc until it comes crashing into the enemy castle. Now because the rock is more dense and has more momentum than the bricks and mortar holding the castle together, it is more likely to crash into the walls and punch a giant hole in it. Because if you fired a trebuchet at a castle and the thing just ended up bouncing off the wall, you'd be pretty disheartened or just rather silly for putting something that pathetic in your trebuchet.

Ph-ootball!

The raiders played a great game on Friday at Aloha Stadium. I thought they did well despite having some obvious ups and downs throughout the game. However they managed to pull out in the end. Not to say that the game wasn't interesting, but, I started noticing how the player used the odd shape of the ball and physics to complete their passing plays. The first thing I noticed was that the ball was oddly shaped. It was shaped like a...well...football. I guess some people call it an olive shape or something like that but, it was really a very odd shape. However, the ball is made in that odd shape because it makes it aerodynamically different. Because of the points at opposite ends of the ball, it allows it to fly more smoothly through the air. This helps to explain why throwing a spiral is best. Like a bullet, as the ball rotates through the air, it becomes straighter and faster and is more likely to go into the arms of your receiver. Also, I guess with a bit more elongation in the center, it is easier to hold onto when someone tries to run the ball. However, this odd shape made it difficult to catch the ball if it is rolling or if someone dropped it. Then again, your not really supposed to drop it anyway right? There were some other cool physics things I noticed during the game like projectile motion, momentum, and of course, net force. But overall, I presume it was the skill of the player that made the Raiders come out on top!

Depth Charge on land

So whilst I was casually viewing one of my favorite shows on the discovery channel, Mythbusters, I got to see the hosts try something that was seen in a movie. Apparently the special was about using different methods to bypass different types of security devices. The last was of course, the safe. The idea that they were testing was to cut a hole into a large safe, fill it with water, and detonate an explosive inside. Supposedly by filling the container to maximum capacity with water and providing an extra boost of pressure, the resulting outward force would be enough to tear off the front door to the safe. Basically, they were going to set off a pressure charge inside a safe. Now although this theoretically would make sense, several flaws were found in this design. One problem was that the safe was not entirely water proof, so trying to fill it up provided some problems. The other problem was the concept itself. What happens when the charge explodes is that the energy from the explosion is transfered in all direction with little to no reduction in force. In other words, the explosion would not be focused enough to simply blast the door off, but would also blow up the entire safe. So everything was prepared and sure enough, when the charge was ignited, the safe fell apart. The door had been ripped off its hinges, but the roof of the safe had also been torn apart and most of the treasure that would have been the prize of any thief was either soggy or blown up.

Halo 3 + Physics = woot

So during the weekend, I played about oh.......6 hours of video games more than i should have. but one of the best times was when I started playing the highly anticipated game Halo 3. Now although it is about aliens and genetically evolved super humans, the physics within the game were actually surprisingly accurate. The game took account of friction, projectile motion, momentum, along with other principles. What surprised me the most was the apparently accurate recreation of gravity, both regular and anti-gravity. First of all, the regular gravity was really accurate. From jumps, to throwing grenades, to explosions, the gravity depicted in the game seemed very realistic. But the coolest part of the game was the different ways to reduce and even reverse gravity. Certain maps had the ability to reduce gravity to as little as 50%. If our world was like that, I could run from Weinberg to Castle in like 30 seconds. Also all of the anti-gravity weapons and tools were really fun. The best was the anti-grav hammer. It was 2 times as big as I was and whenever I swung it, it would send out a shock wave of anti gravity. This meant that vehicles, grenades, and even people headed towards me could easily be deflected with a swing of the hammer. Grav lifts, or rather anti-grav lifts could propel me skyward to get a good look at the battlefield. One awesome part was when you jumped in the "Man-Cannon" which was basically a strong grav lift pointed at a 45 degree angle. Overall it is a really great game with really great physics!